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Post by demikara on Apr 7, 2020 17:03:39 GMT -6
"Good people are like that. And she's a good person, even if she does have her finger in every pot on Terra." She couldn't say anything. It was the same with her and the empire. It was going to be interesting going from that to a commoner, to someone not in the government at all. "If this goes well, I have three hard drives hidden away for you guys. What she asked for isn't near enough payment, after all. And I pay my debts." The fact that she'd still owe a favor after all this would rankle, of course, but it was better than the alternative, as far as she was concerned.
"It's not weapons schematics, or weaknesses. Nothing top secret. But it's still something."
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Post by Ylanne on Apr 7, 2020 17:09:52 GMT -6
Qahtani laughed with the lightness of a young girl. Oh, and she missed those days, too. "I'm sure she'll appreciate it more than she'll ever say." For all the old woman's love of flowery words and old-fashioned turns of phrase, she had always much preferred actions to speech. "We're going to head to a TIB outpost, usually more of a listening station than anything else. But we've got the place equipped for just about anything. A secret rendezvous, an alternate command center, a bunker, a temporary holding cell, or, well, a medical facility." There had been that incident with the wayward Scatterrans after all, and then the other mishap with the unfortunate Belkan general, and of course, the cats. How could Qahtani forget the damn cats? "The old woman once brought a whole crop of kittens to the place, and the mother cat with them too. They'd been hit by a speeding truck about ten miles away. She insisted we figure out a way to save them. Would you believe it? Five whole cats. Cats. That's what she brought into the place."
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Post by demikara on Apr 7, 2020 17:13:19 GMT -6
"I don't think you have room to speak. You're bringing a cat there now." Hope pointed out cheerfully. "Though I am a rather large cat and not five cats. Does the size make up for it?" She grinned. This was was interesting, that was for sure. She seemed nice. "I figured it would be a TIB outpost. Even retired, she's still got a lot of sway in the TIB." That was the truth and it was one that Hope was very curious about. "She's going to have a huge funeral, when she goes."
Or at least, a great many peole mourning her in some way or another. Wasn't that the way to go though, mourned by many, loved by so many?
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Post by Ylanne on Apr 7, 2020 18:15:54 GMT -6
"Okay, that's fair," said Qahtani, smiling ruefully. "Though arguably, it's the Director who's bringing the cat in. I'm just the messenger this time. Then again, she did another time insist we treat an entire damn mountain lion. We were asking her whether she thought we were some kind of wildlife veterinary outfit, instead of an intelligence agency." They were reaching the end of another pass of the tunnels, another split. Qahtani took the left side of the fork again, sending her orbs down ahead of them. A few eyes blinked slowly at them. Some kind of sloth, or a cousin to them, burrowed partway into the wall. "By the way, I hope you liked the pizza. Stan's a good guy, though a bit gruff, and he's been feeding a lot of us for decades now." How the old woman had found him, though, she still didn't know. Qahtani shoved her hands in her pockets then, balling them into fists. Her fingers were growing numb by now.
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Post by demikara on Apr 7, 2020 18:20:10 GMT -6
"It was delicious. Not expected, but two pizzas is about right for a single adult erutin. I may look tiny, but trust me, that's all shifting." She was big enough to ride, in her natural form, and she knew it. But she wasn't about to be ridden. The empress may have allowed her previous husband to do so, but she was pretty sure even that was only when the two went 'hunting' together for some hapless prisoner.
Notes on the empress' preferred blood sport was included on the hard drive. She liked hunting down prisoners and eating them raw, killing them with the first bite. It was disgusting and cruel and barbaric. And it was also something she worked hard to keep very quiet. "If I'm ever in Wing City again, I'll have to have some more."
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Post by Ylanne on Apr 7, 2020 18:29:30 GMT -6
"You should probably stay far away from Wing City after this," said Qahtani, "unless you're two hundred percent sure you'd never be identifiable. The old woman suggests leaving the planet once you're ready to go, for good." The old woman had also mentioned something about Hope having sneaked into Ĭtpraṽmår Prison too, shapeshifting of course. "We do bring a lot of Stan's pizzas out to people, but it's not the only thing we deliver." They'd delivered bodies, and gold, and drugs, and weapons, and hard drives, and even whole ships before. And once, a litter of cats. More often than not though, the deliveries brought no real excitement, nothing of the kind immortalized in cinematic depictions of their profession, just notes from the old woman. She always handwrote them. "So... you saw the Director at Ĭtpraṽmår. How is she?" If Qahtani were judging based solely on the trial, she suspected not too well, but, well, she hadn't been able to speak to Drulović directly, just had received the alert from one of the guards, who was in reality loaned from the Bureau and not a regular there.
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Post by demikara on Apr 7, 2020 18:33:14 GMT -6
"Not well. I offered to get her a walker. She pointed out she only has one good hand now. I think she needs a wheelchair. Though I get the feeling she'd never accept one." And a wheelchair may have the same problems as a walker. It needed two hands to use, she thought. Well, there had to be some solution. "There's a standing order to bring her food she can eat though. It's listed as an attempt to soften her up, so I suspect it will continue, even with my disappearance. As far as anyone knows, I didn't take the mission to visit her." She was known to use an alias for mission, or a series of them. "And I don't intend on coming back to Wing City. The Empress is entirely too fond of it and knows I like it too."
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Post by Ylanne on Apr 7, 2020 18:45:59 GMT -6
Qahtani looked sidelong at Hope, squeezing her fingers against each other in their pockets. "To soften her up? Were you trying to recruit her?" She resisted the urge to snort in disbelief. The old woman would never defect, not to anyone, not ever. The thought that anyone would try was almost amusing in itself, but then again, Hope was in intelligence. So of course she would try. She wouldn't have been doing her job if she hadn't. And it made sense, though of course, in the end, it wouldn't have worked. Qahtani knew the old woman too well. "Well, I guess it makes sense you'd try. I'm sad about her injuries. We've all been worried about her." The glowing orbs seemed almost to wink in the tunnel. "About halfway there," she said, peering ahead into the tunnel now, where another one of those critters blinked lazily at the two, with soft yellow eyes. Qahtani repressed a shudder and quickened her pace ever so slightly.
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Post by demikara on Apr 7, 2020 18:49:29 GMT -6
"Eh. Everyone's going to be trying, now that she's stuck in one place. So long as there's periodic signs of interest, they'll keep it going even when I'm gone, and there's no way she hasn't figured that up." It went without saying. "I'm hoping she knows to bait the right hooks. She could have a decent life, in that prison. Or as good a life as someone cooped up can have."
Hope grinned at the other. "I gave her my daughter's old comforter. She was cold. It's hideous and 100% meant for a seven year old girl. But it'll keep her warm." And it was no skin off her back. She had a lot of memories of Rachel. She could afford to lose the one.
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Post by Ylanne on Apr 7, 2020 19:19:41 GMT -6
"From what I hear of it, plenty have already started to try," said Qahtani. "They'll smuggle in messages, or when they can, they'll send an envoy to try to see her. It'll be obvious to anyone watching her visitation logs, but, just the idea of it would have to be tantalizing to most any empire that plays in our corner of the galaxy." She threw her shoulders back, stretching a moment, as they continued through the tunnels. "The Director will do what she wants. Like always." She snorted then. "I still can't believe you left her a kid's blanket. That's great." She looked ahead, finally seeing the tunnel give way to the particular fork she'd been waiting for, this one with an image of a saint hung on the wall that came into view when one of Qahtani's orbs floated near it. She didn't know who any of the saints were - wrong religion for that - but she figured they had to have been from Drulović. No one else she'd ever met had pictures like that. What had the old woman called them? Oh, yes, icons. That was it. "Well, I hope it helps her. She's elderly. And she should be retired." Qahtani looked forward to her own retirement one day. Maybe by then, her girlfriend might be her wife.
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Post by demikara on Apr 7, 2020 19:26:01 GMT -6
"She was cold. She's an old lady and hey. I was raised to respect my elders. Even if they are about two centuries younger than me." Well. She knew better than to run buck wild at least, and shrugged. "And by then she had talked me over anyway and we had spent most of the day together. Besides, if anyone asks, I was...playing on her sentimental nature." Hope offered, having decided that sounded good enough. "We may have been at cross purposes in the business, but I can acknowledge her as a colleague, of sorts."
Just on two different teams, until very recently.
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Post by Ylanne on Apr 7, 2020 19:38:37 GMT -6
"So I guess that makes us colleagues, then," said Qahtani, tilting her head slightly to the side. "Of sorts." She took a right at this fork, nodding toward the icon. She'd seen Drulović kiss them, but, well, that was the old woman's business, not hers. "Anyway. I'm Meri," she said, giving her usual alias. Par for the course in this trade. "I figured you should have something to call me by. We're going to be together for the next five days then, and maybe a bit longer than that. Since you'll want the procedure to start after five days." The day Hope was supposed to meet with the Empress. Someone whom Qahtani had always known to be wary of, but now, felt a distinct chill thinking of her hunting for terrorized prisoners to eat them alive. Had Drulović known about this? Qahtani figured there was no way the old woman hadn't known about it, in some fashion. But of course, she hadn't spilled any of those secrets, not to Qahtani, or likely to any others in the Bureau.
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Post by demikara on Apr 7, 2020 19:43:24 GMT -6
"A name works for sure. Nice to meet you Meri. I'm Hope. The director is literally the only Terran who uses my erutin name. So please. Just Hope." You could only handle so much of a massacre of your name after all, and it was easier to go by the meaning. "Five days. That'll definitely be enough time for all the prep work needed. I don't actually know how extensive the chip is though."
She didn't know how bad the surgery would actually be. She knew it was going to be invasive, but how invasive....she didn't know, not really. How could she? "Hopefully it won't be too bad. I suspect there will be a lot of scans leading up to it." That was going to be interesting.
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Post by Ylanne on Apr 7, 2020 19:53:37 GMT -6
"Well, that's Jo and Taylor's department," said Qahtani. "They're the scientific/medical experts. And I'm sure they'll do their best to take excellent care. They know how entrenched it probably is, and how much work there will be." For her part, Qahtani wasn't all too sure how she felt about these two. Halbertsma Taylor was Aschen, a defector herself, who'd been rumored to have done extensive work for Langara's torturers at one point, using her expertise in neurology and psychology to do it. And Jodi Proctor was a mercenary, though one exceptionally pedigreed, with two research doctoral degrees and an M.D. to her name, all by the age of only forty. But the old woman said they could be trusted, and everyone at the Bureau learned to take that proclamation as gospel. "I hope you'll like mansaf. My grandmother taught me how to make it, and it's my favorite thing to make out where we're going." Erutin liked meat, as far as Qahtani knew. So the lamb dish would be fine.
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Post by demikara on Apr 7, 2020 19:57:43 GMT -6
"I've never had it. Most Terran food I've had has tasted alright though." She didn't mind it and some of it was quite good. It just tended to come in smaller serving sizes than Erutin food did. "You guys cook very differently than we do. I'm pretty sure it's because you have proper hands. Which are frankly an amazing things to have, as far as I'm concerned. Definitely my favorite part of the shape." She could do without the back pain. They may be able to walk upright, but their skeletons weren't built for it at all.
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